“My god, we took so many pictures,” said Karen Elson on the Sunday morning after an epic photo shoot in New York. “It was a bit like playing dress-up.” And while trying on fabulous clothes for the camera is all in a day’s work for someone like Elson, this particular project—Vintage Vanguard—is very close to her heart. The concept, cooked up with friend and collaborator Liz Goldwyn, started off as a small dream. “We are both vintage collectors, Liz much more than me, and we had the idea of asking our friends who were designers to rethink some of our own pieces with the proceeds going to charity,” Elson said. “We had no idea it would get this big.” Enlisting designers like Zac Posen, Marc Jacobs, and Suno’s Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis (as well as getting a major assist from Atelier Swarovski and KCD) the duo commissioned the reimagining of eighteen dresses, along with other pieces, which will be auctioned off starting today on Moda Operandiwith 100 percent of the proceeds benefiting Dress for Success, a nonprofit organization that provides wardrobes and career development tools and other support to low-income women looking to return to or enter the workforce. “Whatever people want to say about fashion, the truth is that clothing is armor, and what we choose to wear is a reflection of where we are in our lives,” said Elson. “When you have a big job interview or a court appearance, you are greatly helped by having the right clothes—something that lets you feel powerful and helps you put the right foot forward.” The online auction will be followed up with a charity cocktail party on January 13 at the Jane hotel hosted by Elson, Goldwyn, and Vogue’s Tonne Goodman, where the remaining pieces will be sold in a silent auction. “It was very personal,” said Zac Posen of participating in the exclusive collection for which he transformed a magnificent black sequined and beaded ball dress from Elson’s own collection. “This was a dress I remember seeing her wear years ago—something she would have worn dancing at Don Hill’s in 1997—and it was wonderful and creative to build it into a new piece.” So, was seeing some of the most cherished vintage finds forever altered at all bittersweet for the women? “Not at all,” said Goldwyn, who started her work with Dress for Success when she was 19 years old. “What I always loved about vintage clothes is that you let the woman who wore it before you live on in some way. In this case, it’s giving clothes a new life for an incredibly worthy cause.” After the shoot, Posen ushered the girls over to his apartment for a homemade dinner—root vegetable soup, miso glazed sea bass—while Elson assembled a batch of snowstorm-appropriate hot toddies. So, that’s his version of an impromptu evening? “The girls requested healthy,” he said. “I wasn’t going to be getting away with a big bowl of pasta this time.” Reliving the day over the meal, Posen recalled a song from “All That Jazz” that was instrumental in his thinking about the project. “There is one line that kept coming to me: Everything old is new again.”